


Sweet as Sunshine

by ScriveSpinster



Category: Fallen London | Echo Bazaar
Genre: F/M, PWP, Prisoner’s Honey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 18:32:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17833901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ScriveSpinster/pseuds/ScriveSpinster
Summary: A hedonistic newcomer to London has an encounter with a sweet-natured youth with a fondness for Hell, Parabola, and prisoner’s honey.Written forthis prompt meme. Prompts werehoney, incognito, undress, dream





	Sweet as Sunshine

London, they say, is a city of wonders, where the wealthy and the dissolute rub shoulders and every pleasure is there for the taking.

You’ve never been wealthy, but you’ve always been good at – call it not fakery, but finding your way to interesting places and making yourself welcome there, quite independent of the arbitrary qualifications of birth and means. And you are a connoisseur of wonders, so when you hear talk of a place that lives free of daylight’s chains, of course you find your way there, and of course you fall in deep. The city welcomes you in, and in this dark place, everything dazzles: carnival tents and spore toffee, the thrill of stolen gemstones spilling from your palms, lamplight rippling on dark water as your lantern-hung boat passes beneath an arching bridge. A young man with fervent eyes leans close, his arm brushing yours, and whispers, _That river flows to hell._

Whether or not it’s true, you cannot tell and do not care to, but you meet him again later, dancing with devils and society ladies at a revel that you snuck into – though judging from the fine and peculiarly lambent fabric of his jacket, he might have been invited. His face is half-hidden by a feathered mask, but you recognize those angular shoulders, the innocent tilt of that smile. And perhaps he recognizes you, when you tilt your fan and bid him approach – or perhaps he sees only a woman in russet gown and fox-faced mask, offering only the camaraderie of strangers.

You dance a turn with him, spinning across a floor inlaid with unfamiliar constellations, and come to rest in a shadowed alcove, where you press him back against the balustrade and kiss the wine from his lips with only the eyes of angelic statues for company. But anyone might turn and see you there, with your mask askew and his fingers skimming lightly up your back, and so he says, “Can I show you to a quieter place than this?”

“Of course,” you say, “of course,” and his smile beneath the mask is unaffected delight. He leads you back past an amber-eyed attendant, into a room of velvet couches and heavy brocade curtains and silvery, gilt-edged mirrors. No backalley honey den, this, though bowls of honey sit on every table; the wealthy find their private pleasures here, amid the scent of wax and roses. You’re already fumbling with his belt as the two of you fall back breathless onto welcoming cushions, and he’s drawing your skirts up, unfastening garters, pulling your undergarments aside.

He talks, as you undo his jacket button by button, of the Mountain’s promise and the bounty of the Garden; you pull his linen shirt up, revealing skin never wounded and never touched by the sun, and he tugs your gown down with guileless eagerness, kissing the line of your shoulders as he bares them, whispering prayers between kisses. He is, you learn, a devotee of strange saints; he views pleasure and pain as equal parts of the same rich hymn, the loss of the soul as apotheosis. He pulls you close, his fingers quick on the laces of your corset, and tells you that one day, he will give birth to a star.

It sounds like nonsense, but lovely nonsense. You tell him so, with your fingers wrapped ‘round his prick, and in reply he only gasps and angles his hips up into your grip, graceless, letting you do what you will with him. You shift towards him and stroke unhurriedly along his length, watching the way his eyes flutter closed and his head tilts back, until at last he twitches in your palm and spills hot over your fingers and his bare stomach. And he smiles up at you as he catches your hand between his own, kisses your knuckles and licks each of your fingers clean.

It’s then that you reach for the honey – curious substance, viscous and amber, shot through with golden light. You lift the little silver bowl to his lips and let him drink deep before taking a sip of your own. You find it sweeter than you expected, smooth as it coats your tongue and sticky on his mouth when you kiss him. He’s already blurring at the edges as the lassitude takes you, and soon the both of you are gone.

You open your eyes to a dream of water in the dark, cool currents washing your skin and submersion without fear of drowning. In your dream, the water is bright with tiny points of light, suspended like fireflies around you, and the ground below is littered with the detritus of forgotten cities. You dive, and he follows, the pale arc of his body like moonlight in the water. 

In the pillared hall of a sunken temple, with sea-grasses swaying, he catches you against a fallen fresco, parts your legs and looks up with laughter curled at the corners of his mouth. Serpents watch with intelligent eyes from the mouths of jewel-encrusted caves. You pay them no heed, and they offer you no harm, though there’s a moment when you imagine smooth scales sliding over your skin and a pulse of heat flashes through you. Then he kisses your thigh, warm and human-soft, and you have no more concern for snakes; you get a hand in his hair and pull him up to where that mouth will do more good, and after that, all you can think of is his hands splayed over your hips, and his tongue, patient and teasing on your heated skin, drawing you with aching slowness to the point of crisis and holding you just there. The taste of honey lingers in your throat, and you close your eyes, give yourself over to drifting currents as the wave builds and breaks and carries you with it.

And after that, it’s hard to say. The honey dream ends gradually, not with a return to the world but with true sleep, as though there’s hardly any border between them. Your dreams are good ones, you know that much, though you remember little of them but heat and light, and the lazy drone of bees. When you wake, the youth is gone, though he left you a note on scented paper: _Remember me, love, in dark of night,_ and in place of a signature, a sketch of a star.

Foolish sentiment. Even the days are dark down here, and should you look up, you’ll see nothing but bioluminescent insects shining. Still, you think you know what he means by it, and you don’t begrudge him a bit of poetry. He was sweet, and you won’t forget him.

You dress languidly, still sated, untroubled by your solitude. You never wanted more from him than this. When you part the curtains, the chamber is empty but for a woman dreaming on a couch next to a glass of spilled wine, and the flash of your own image in the mirrors, backlit by verdant light – but that isn’t you, is it? You never smiled like that.

The room is colder, you decide, than it was when you’d entered it in company. You leave hurriedly, making your way out by servants’ hallways, with an itch between your shoulderblades as if you’re being watched. You’re not, you’re sure. However often you turn to look behind you, there’s no one there. But it’s a relief when you tumble from the back entrance into the alley, trading roses for lichen-spotted brickwork and horse dung and no mirrors at all. You’re not sure why that’s important, but you’re certain that it is.

The note, you keep. The young man, you never see again.


End file.
